The Trial of Vera Zasulich in 1878 1

Alex P. Schmid

Vera Zasulich’s deed opened a new era of revolutionary terror … it is difficult to imagine the now decisive turn of populism to terror without the Zasulich case.

Society seemed to say through the court: yes, it is legitimate and necessary to resort to violence to shake up the autocracy. And the autocracy in turn gave up its last attempts to appease the intelligentsia and observe its own laws in dealing with sedition.

A.B. Ulam (1977)2

3.1. Introduction

Trials sometimes become mirrors of their times, providing a glimpse into the state of a society.3 In the 1870s, Russian society was divided into an educated westernised class (then called ‘the intelligentsia’—perhaps 20 per cent of the population) and an illiterate, largely rural majority of 100 million common people, mostly peasants.

While 23 million of them had been released from serfdom in 1861, they were still burdened by debts to their former owners; less than one third of Russia’s land was in their hands; for many there was not enough land to make a decent living.4 Russian government was divided into an autocratic executive (which also controlled the hand-picked Senate) and a judiciary that was, thanks to the reforms of 1864, based on democratic procedures.5 By the mid-1870s, Russia also saw the rise of a mass-circulation press that was becoming commercially independent, less constrained by censorship, reflecting and shaping public opinion in the capital of St. Peters-burg.6 In 1877 and early 1878 Russia was at war with Turkey, initially against the wishes of the Tsar, though the press had pushed him into defending orthodox Chris-tians in the Balkans who suffered from atrocities by the Ottoman empire. The war was costly, both in terms of finances and in terms of casualties, but Russia gained the upper hand and Turkey had to sue for peace in early 1878. Yet the spoils of vic-tory were largely lost by mid-1878 when the Western powers at the Congress of Berlin forced Russia to make what many Russians considered humiliating conces-sions.7

It was against this general background that the assassination attempt by Vera Zasulich on 24 January 1878 and her trial on 31 March 1878 took place. The Zasulich trial has been called ‘the most momentous trial in the history of imperial Russia’.8 Zasulich’s assassination attempt on the Governor of St. Petersburg and her acquittal by an independent jury set an example that stimulated the emergence of assassination as a form of ‘vigilante justice’ serving both as punishment and as ‘propaganda by the deed’. At the end of a series of assassinations of government officials, on 1 March 1881, the reformist Tsar Alexander ii was assassinated by thePeople’s Will(Narodnaya Volya), a terrorist group led by another woman, Vera Figner. It was a moment when Russian and European history took a decisive turn in one direction at the end of which stood the assassination of Franz Ferdinand, the Austrian heir to the throne. This, in 1914, triggered the First World War which, three years later, would lead to the Russian Revolution. Indeed, to the extent that the emergence of ‘propaganda by the deed’

type terrorism can be linked to a single person and date, the assassination attempt by Vera Zasulich on 24 January 1878 would be a good candidate. While her assault on Governor Fyodor Trepov itself was unsuccessful—the governor survived—her trial made her, thanks to the attention given to this assassination attempt by the mass media, a celebrity and, in the eyes of those inspired by her, a heroine.

In the District Court of St. Petersburg she and, even more so, her defence lawyer

‘out-performed’ the prosecution. On 31 March 1878 the female assassin managed to gain the sympathy of the 18 jurors in the courtroom, captured the imagination of the crowd outside and, thanks to the press, touched a chord with much of the intelligentsia in Russia and beyond. How all this could happen to a shy woman with no personal charisma, a person who was not very confident of herself, is due to a confluence of circumstances in the peculiar historical context of the time. Before we turn to the trial and its judicial, social and political consequences, some historical background is in order for a better understanding.

3.1.1. What Happened before the Trial

Tsar Alexander ii not only abolished serfdom in Russia in the March 1861, he also introduced a number of other reforms. Among these were judicial reforms that aimed to bring the country’s judicial system more in line with West European standards.9 Between 1864 and 1866 a unified court system was created for much of Russia. The judicial reforms also changed the way criminal trials were held. An adversarial criminal justice procedure was introduced, assigning to judges the role of acting as umpires between the defence and the prosecution. The courtroom became the stage where a

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defence attorney and the state’s prosecutor would confront each other to establish truth and guilt.10 Judges could, under the new reform scheme, no longer be removed by the government and verdicts by the courts could not be overturned by the executive.

Professional advocates made their appearance, court hearings were held in public and juries represented in the first instance civil society and not the government.11 This judicial reform was, however, not complete; a system of administrative justice co-existed with the new system; it allowed police and gendarmes to re-arrest defendants set free by the courts and exile them to the provinces—often Siberia. In addition, certain crimes against the state were excluded from the competence of juries by the new legislation.12 Nevertheless, some quasi-political crimes, including Vera Zasulich’s, were at times dealt with like common crimes.13 The great reforms of 1864 had created a wave of expectation about further moves towards democratisation of the autocratic regime. However, after he had survived an assassination attempt in 1866, the reformist zeal of the Tsar declined sharply. The growing unrest among the educated part of the youth was met by the regime with increased repression and would even lead to the abrogation of some of the reforms of 1864.14

3.1.2. The Bogoliubov Affair as Cause

An example of this regression could be seen in the repression of a demonstration held in December 1876 by radical students on the Nevsky Prospect in St. Petersburg. The demonstration was led by Georgi Plechanov (who was later to become the founder of the Russian Social-Democratic Party). While it was meant as a workers’ demonstration, most of the 200 to 250 participants were in fact students.15 The police attacked them within five minutes after the demonstration had begun. A fight developed in which some constables were roughed up by some of the students. General Fydor Trepov, Governor and police chief of St. Petersburg, arrived on the scene with his mounted police to organise the arrests. Among those arrested was a 24-year-old man who had not even been on the scene; he was picked up in the neighbourhood because one of the policemen thought he recognised him as one of the students who had just fought with the police outside the Kazan Cathedral on the Nevsky Prospect. He gave his name as Arkhip Petrovich Bogoliubov (his real name was Aleksei Stepaniovich Emelianov) and he had a gun in his pocket.

Bogoliubov was one of the thousands of idealisticnarodniki(populist) youth who, since 1874, had gone ‘to the people’, trying to incite the peasants to revolt against the owners of the large estates and take their land.16 Many of thesenarodnikihad already been apprehended by the police in 1874 and 1875, not infrequently after being

denounced by the very people they wanted to liberate. Many of these populists were detained for years before they obtained their day in court, where they were charged with revolutionary propaganda. That was also to be the fate of Bogoliubov; but the charges brought against him were different. Based on the false testimony of six police witnesses, he was, in January 1877, sentenced to 20 years’ hard labour.17 He had been charged with resisting the police in the demonstration before the Kazan Cathedral and for having made threats to the life of a police aide. It was a tragic case of mistaken identity. Awaiting transportation to another prison, Bogoliubov was placed in the House of Preliminary Detention, the country’s newest and most modern prison in St.

Petersburg.18

Bogoliubov was still there in mid-1877 when General Trepov decided to inspect the House of Detention, after having heard that discipline there had become a problem.

Trepov was a hardliner, widely known for taking bribes, often brutal but at times also sentimental.19 Already in 1861, as police chief of Warsaw, he had ordered his policemen to fire on peaceful Polish demonstrators. After 1866, when the first of some ten attempts on the life of the Tsar failed, Alexander ii had become almost paranoid about his personal security. Trepov was made Commandant of the St. Petersburg police where he arranged for a special police section dedicated to the protection of the Tsar.20 Every morning Trepov would report directly to the Tsar about the security situation. He was also in charge of a police section that was investigating political crimes.21

Among these political crimes were also the revolutionary activities of thenarodniki.

770 of these populists had been arrested in the mid-1870s. Some 70 had already died while in detention awaiting trial due to the unhealthy prison conditions. By October 1877, 193 of those arrested were brought to a trial in which Vladislav Zhelekhovskii acted as prosecutor. ThatTrial of the 193came to an end on 23 January 1878. The defendants’ impassioned speeches, printed and distributed by the underground press, stirred emotions among revolutionary students and were sympathetically received by much of the reading public. These, mostly idealistic if somewhat naïve youths (overwhelmingly the sons and daughters of the nobility, the clergy, burghers and officials, including even the military) had agitated against the status quo, but most of them had not engaged in violence themselves. That was ultimately also recognised in court: the Senate’s court in the end acquitted 153 of the 193 accused and most of the rest appeared at first to get off with light sentences.22

As mentioned above, on 13 July 1877 the House of Preliminary Detention was visited by the Governor of St. Petersburg, General Trepov.23 In the courtyard of the prison Arkhip Bogoliubov apparently tried to speak to the Governor but was rebuked.

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Later when Trepov passed him again, Bogoliubov failed to tip his cap (something he had done in the first encounter). Trepov was annoyed by this apparent lack of respect and hit him so that the cap flew off his head. This was seen as a humiliating blow by other prisoners who were watching the scene from their cell windows; they began to shout in protest. Angered by this and Bogoliubov’s apparent insolence, Trepov ordered that he be flogged with birch rods.

Flogging a political prisoner was, in the view of Russia’s intelligentia, unacceptable.

It was also widely considered unlawful—a shameful practice from Russia’s bad past.

As a form of punishment, it had been abolished by the reforms of 1863. Yet, there were certain exceptions e.g. for soldiers and sailor and people who had lost their civil rights—which included some categories of prisoners. Trepov had, according to his own account, got permission for this particular act of corporal punishment from Konstantin I. Pahlen, the Minister of Justice. To make a stronger case for the punishment he also (falsely) claimed that Bogoliubov had given the other prisoners a sign to riot.24

In the afternoon of 13 July 1877, the acting prison administrator announced that Bogoliubov would be subjected to ‘birching’ for insubordination, which led to a major disturbance among the prisoners. It lasted 24 hours and 100 extra policemen had to be brought in to quell the riot.25 The Minister of Justice had already approved the flogging when he heard about the initial rioting. The punishment was, in this particular case, apparently covered by law since Bogoliubov had lost his civil rights when the sentence against him (20 years’ hard labour—itself unjust because based on mistaken identity) had become legally binding on 24 June 1878.26 Bogoliubov was stripped to his waist and flogged. Rumour had it that he was beaten unconscious but he actually received only 13 of the 25 approved lashes; these he took bravely. Afterwards he was moved to the Lithuanian castle, one of the capital’s worst prisons, where prisoners waiting for deportation to distant labour camps were assembled.27 Trepov, possibly feeling sorry about the whole affair, later claimed that he had sent tea and sugar to Bogoliubov’s cell. Due to the selective censorship of the press, what the public learned about the whole affair was limited; as a consequence rumours exaggerated both the circumstances and the severity of the flogging. Vera Zasulich had read about Bogoliubov’s punishment inGolos(The Voice) in late July 1877.28 As a former political prisoner, she became obsessed by this case and decided that this insult to a political prisoner was unacceptable. Without knowing either Trepov or Bogoliubov, she decided to take revenge.29

Here then we find, in an early manifestation, a familiar chain of events leading to terrorism: an outsider identifies him- or herself with a victim (or a victimised group)

incapable of obtaining justice for an alleged or real wrong. He (or she) then decides to take vicarious revenge on the victim’s behalf—without being appointed by the victim (group) and without a direct personal grudge against the original wrongdoer. Vera Zasulich decided to act for Bogoliubov against Trepov in order to appeal with her deed to a wider public. She had never personally met either of them.

3.2. The Unsuccessful Assassin

Before we proceed further to the terrorist act and the trial, we have to pause here and look at the personality and the motives of Russia’s first female terrorist.

Like Bogoliubov, Vera Zasulich had been an unjustly condemned political prisoner herself and that bond contributed to trigger her fateful deed of 24 January 1878. It was her intent to use the court trial as a platform to bring an act of injustice to the attention of the public.30 However, beyond that, there were other factors that set her on the path to assassination.

She was the daughter of Captain Ivan Zasulich, a despotic person who had been demoted for drunkenness in the army. Vera did not know her father; he died when she was three years old. Her mother, Feoktista, an impoverished woman from the lower nobility, could not afford to bring up all five of her children.

Therefore Vera was sent away from home to be raised by wealthier relatives—a fact she deeply resented. Her education was strict, even when she was sent to a private boarding school in Moscow: running and laughing were forbidden and so was the use of Russian. Only German and French could be spoken. The only employment prospect open to a poor girl like her from the gentry was becoming a governess, a house teacher, for children of richer families than her own. It was not something she wanted. Joining the revolutionary movement was a way out—a choice also made by two of her sisters (the third had died). Vera was quite untypical of a revolutionary: shy and introverted, often depressive and at times even suicidal.31 Originally very Christian, Vera later lost faith (Vera, in Russian, means ‘faith’) and became, for a while, a nihilist, which, for her, had more to do with liberation than with destruction—something that Sergei Nechaev had in mind.32 Later she would write in her memoirs:

But the older I grew, the more I became convinced that I was indeed an alien: I didn’t belong. No one ever held me, kissed me, or sat me on his knees; no one called me pet names. The servants abused me […] And then, the distant specter of revolution

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appeared, making me equal to a boy; I, too, could dream of ‘action’, of ‘exploits’, and of the ‘great struggle’ […] I too could join those who perished for the great cause of love […] I could imagine no greater pleasure than serving the revolution. I had dared only to dream of it, and yet now he [Sergei Nechaev,] was saying that he wanted to recruit me.33

Nechaev was the author of theCatechism of a Revolutionary, a nihilist pamphlet advocating ruthless assassination and shocking terrorism, a break with all conventions and morals that stood in the way of revolution—the end that justified all means. He had written in theCatechism:

The Revolutionist is a doomed man. He has no private interests, no affairs, sentiments, ties, property nor even a name of his own. His entire being is devoured by one purpose, one thought, one passion—the revolution. Heart and soul, not merely by word but by deed, he has severed every link with the social order and with the entire civilized world: with the laws, good manners, conventions, and morality of that world. He is the merciless enemy and continues to inhabit it with only one purpose—to destroy it.34

While the majority of the Russian revolutionaries of the 1860s and 1870s were of upper middle class or noble origin,35 Nechaev was the son of a house painter.36 Through his charisma, he managed to gain a following among students when he came to St.

Petersburg in 1868. There he set up the secret revolutionary societyPeople’s Revenge (Narodnaya Rasprava).37 Vera Zasulich was two years younger than Nechaev. In 1867 she had found her first employment in Serpukhov, just outside Moscow, as a secretary.

Here the future terrorist became an assistant to a Justice of the Peace, an institution introduced by the Judicial Reforms of 1864. The main goal of a Justice of the Peace was, according to the State Council, ‘to satisfy this elemental need of administration of justice according to conscience’.38 That stress on ‘conscience’ rather than merely

‘the law’ was, as it turned out, to become a crucial element in Zasulich’s own trial in 1878.

Zasulich had met Nechaev in January 1869 and, like her two sisters, fell under his hypnotic spell. He declared his love for her (as he probably had done with other women he wanted to recruit). While Vera did not fall for this ruse of his Machiavellian character, she somehow admired his strong personality and agreed to act as a conduit for letters he planned to send from Switzerland to Vladimir Orlov, a fellow revolutionary who could not receive them directly as he was under police surveillance.39 That cost her

dearly. On 30 April 1869, while leaving for a holiday with her mother, she was arrested.

Without even being interrogated or charged with a crime, she was first put into a cell in the Lithuanian Castle (a prison outside St. Petersburg) and then in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. There had been no court hearing of her case; it was a routine administrative detention of a suspect. When Nechaev was extradited from Switzerland and charged with murder, she was brought to the trial to serve as

Without even being interrogated or charged with a crime, she was first put into a cell in the Lithuanian Castle (a prison outside St. Petersburg) and then in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. There had been no court hearing of her case; it was a routine administrative detention of a suspect. When Nechaev was extradited from Switzerland and charged with murder, she was brought to the trial to serve as